License plate transform

To test the transforms fornrpla.de, we exploit a bit of knowledge of the Danish registration system. The data on each vehicle varies a lot between type and especially between new and older passenger vehicles after some changes to the system in the end of the 00’s. The approach is thus to run the transform on all kinds of vehicles that are issued plates for in Denmark. We have to exclude special issues like vehicles of the royals or the emergency services, as their license plates cannot be looked up² and we have not been able to find VIN’s of these.

This approach is bit different from the DK Hostmaster-transforms, since there e.g. a difference in account types only meant a chance in one field, while it here cannot be known if some other field is set in a proprietary way.

There are a lot of fields to be used in the data. Appendix D.1 shows en example of these – specifically the output of test 1, Table 5.3.

Test cases for every single field is not made, but with the focus on the different vehicle categories, we expect adequate coverage. The issue remains as with the DK Hostmaster API, that some obscure case might exist, but lessons learned from the other test cases are implemented appropri-ately and will catch other cases as well. An example: Some field is None and fails returned to the parser without being cast to a string. Recognizing this, we harden all the code reading the data, where the fields can be None to handle this.

To verify the transform for most of other types vehicles, we have used the input as show in Table 5.3. Especially with the specialty types (trailers, scooters, government vehicles) we need to ensure that the fields display properly and that we can output the information found. References to the screenshots of the results are given for all test cases shown on the following pages.

We have not included the debug information in the console, as nrpla.de does not include elaborate error messages than cannot be contained in a pop-up. The output is identical to that shown in Appendix D.1.

A specific date is hard to find, but it happened between 2008 and 2012.

We have not implemented all fields (see field implementation scheme in App. D.1), but there are more info to be found for newer cars.

thesis.licenseplate with value AD25729 (registered in 2013)

OK (see Fig. 5.11a)

2Examples are the DEMA (“Danish Emergency Management Agency” or “Beredskabsstyrelsen”) using plates with 5 numbers, fire brigades either have regular plates or something likeM1, the royals use e.g.

3: A leased passenger vehi-cle

Leasing has a separate field. thesis.licenseplate with value BP22043

Most cars are without publicly no-tated debt, so the opposite case is covered.

In the API this cause the field to be missing. Inspections only lack the tax on the car, as no present amount is shown and at least the first amount listed historically will

Apps exist that claim to be able to distinguish them due to a special registration.

To see another kind of government vehicle and uncover any special im-plementations of fields.

15: A vehi-cle with sev-eral different inspection lo-cations

To verify that the different loca-tions are displayed properly and

All the cases are independent of whether a VIN or license plates are used as input, but we have to ensure a VIN can be used. were not aware of such a construct.

OK (see Fig. 5.18)

17: An invalid license plate

The error handling of invalid license plates and VIN’s are identical, so we only need to test one of them

thesis.licenseplate plates between 2 and 7 characters (numbers and letters).

thesis.licenseplate with valueESTES

OK (see Fig. 5.9)

Table 5.3: Test-cases for the transform for Danish license plates/VIN’s on the API of nrdpla.de.

Figure 5.9: Graph view of a car with a custom license plate (and debtors).

Figure 5.10: The output on the graph from a car before the extended fields where used in the registry;

note how a lot of properties are empty. On the graph we also see the location-entites of the inspection halls.

Three screenshots shows the property view of each location-entity for the inspection halls, demonstrating the ability to tie the vehicle to a specific location (at some point of time) due to several inspections in the

(a) The property view of a newer car using the extended fields. Notice how all properties regarding car specifications are filled out.

(b) The property view of a leased car. Notice theleasing period-property correctly displaying the duration of the lease contract and no Last inspection dateis returned (because its a brand new car).

Figure 5.11: The property view of a new and a leased car side-by-side.

Figure 5.12: A car with debt. Notice a maltego.Person entity is returned with the debtor and we have included the debtor’s date of birth in the property view. In the property view of the car, the name and CVR of the creditor is included too (and can later be extended into its own entity, when the CVR-transforms gets implemented).

Figure 5.13: The property view of a car with revoked plates. It has no insurance, is “afmeldt” (revoked) and we need to get the taxes from ajson-list of historic payments instead of a field for the latest payment.

This list is searched for the last full period (6 months), which were not a refund, and that amount is returned.

(a)Property view of a motorcycle.

(b) Property view of a scooter.

Figure 5.14: The property view of a MC and a scooter side-by-side.

(a)Property view of a trailer. (b) Property view of a caravan.

Figure 5.15: The property view of a trailer and a caravan side-by-side.

(a) Property view of a police car. Notice in par-ticular the insurance company saying “SELVFOR-SIKRING” (self-insurance) which to my knowledge is illegal in Denmark except for government entities.

This may indicate government use and in particular a police car. We conclude on that in the upper field Public/government vehicle?.

(b) Property view of an ambulance. This ambu-lance are not self-insured, but instead no taxes are paid on it, which otherwise only scooters are exempted from. We conclude that it must be a government vehicle and it is also registered as an ambulance.

Figure 5.16: The property view of a police car and an ambulance side-by-side to compare two types of government vehicles and the discrepancies they have compared to the other vehicle categories.

(a)The property view of lorry (which also hap-pens to have revoked plates).

(b)Property view of a bus used for passenger services.

Figure 5.17: The property view of a lorry and a bus side-by-side.

Figure 5.18: Graph and property view of a car found from running the transform on a VIN instead.

Notice the odd case where debt is publicly notared with a debtor, but no creditors are returned.

Figure 5.19: The error returned to the user if the license plate or VIN is invalid. We do not print the returned output in the console in this case, because all that is returned is put into the pop-up already.